


Unbroken

by fellowshipper



Category: Generation X (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellowshipper/pseuds/fellowshipper
Summary: Jono is used to being a hollowed-out shell of himself. He isn't used to seeing Jubilee like that--and he for damn sure isn't used to playing cheerleader.





	

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I'm playing fast and loose with timelines here. In this case, I've set this immediately post Age of X. Jono has just lost Clan Akkaba's augmentations, and Jubilee has just been transformed into a vampire and is still in holding at Utopia. Do the timelines match up like that? Nope. Do I care? Nope. 
> 
> Jono's pre-Generation X backstory here is cobbled together from my own roleplaying headcanon. Just so we're clear on that.
> 
> As mentioned in the tags, there are references to self-harm and suicide attempts/thoughts in here. I don't think they're too graphic, but they're there. If that's something you struggle with, please approach with caution.
> 
> And as always, italics (where applicable) indicate telepathic speech.

_How many more?_ Jono wondered. How many more friends, teammates, acquaintances, and innocent bystanders would he have to bury? How many more would he lose before he finally admitted to himself, to the world, that all he or any other mutant had to offer was death and chaos? How many more days would he spend wandering through a waking fog, and how many more nights would he beg for silence and peace and maybe even oblivion before exhaustion forced him to sleep the dreamless sleep of the hopeless? 

No matter what Dr. Rao thought, he wasn’t suicidal. Not anymore, at least. His thoughts turned down that path often, but he knew himself well enough to know it was idle fantasy at worst, barely conscious fear at its best. Matter of fact, he was beginning to get bored with the pattern of exploding, waking up in an isolated room, undergoing extensive evaluations of both body and psyche, and then being placed under scrutiny because others thought he might try to kill himself. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered it, or even tried; but that first time had been years ago, after he’d been declared well (well _enough;_ he would never be well again) to be discharged from hospital care, after a team of doctors who specialized in mutations declared him able to exist without their oversight and a nearly-as-large team of psychiatrists had declared him sane (sane _enough_ ; he would never be completely sane again, either). 

He’d known what to do to get out. He wasn’t a genius by any means, but he was wise enough to know what to say and how to act to secure his freedom. When the discharge nurse who walked him to the door cheerily asked him how he planned to spend his first day on his own outside after months spent in captivity at a London WHO center, he’d known to reply just as effortlessly and cheerfully. _Not much. Maybe go to the theater, stop by a friend’s place, go check in on my parents. I’ll be fine, ma’am, thank you._

He knew not to tell her he fully intended to drop from a bridge and sink into the Thames before his medical chart could even be filed.

That hadn’t worked, clearly—another joke of his mutation, he supposed, that it could destroy him but not _be_ destroyed—and he promptly gave up the idea. He had always been the self-destructive sort, after all, and there were plenty of other ways he could ruin himself that didn’t involve an easy and immediate death. After what happened to Gayle, he hardly thought he deserved that quick release anyway.

So he decided to go the opposite approach and become a superhero instead, someone who found purpose and meaning and a reason to keep existing solely through helping others who truly _wanted_ to survive. In time, those thoughts receded, turned into faded images and half-formed ideas at the back of his mind. He still woke sometimes feeling as though the lungs that no longer functioned properly were filling with water, and he wanted so desperately to splutter and choke for air, but at least he stopped wanting to try again and again until he finally got it right.

After this most recent setback, when he had finally managed to regain some semblance of a tolerable life and then had it ripped from him yet again, he could do nothing but laugh when he came back to himself and realized what had happened. The rest of the universe, as ever, went on from its latest crisis without a problem, but not him. No, never him. Whatever alternate reality the world had emerged from this time had stripped from him his last attempt at whatever passed for normalcy for him, and all he could do was laugh. Except that he _couldn’t_ laugh, not really, and so the eerie, unsettling static in the minds of everyone around him had been enough to get him placed in an “observation unit.” Only to monitor his condition, Dr. Rao had assured him, but that wasn’t the first time he’d heard that. They wouldn’t dare call it a suicide watch to his face; the doctors in London hadn’t, either. But he knew.

It took nearly three weeks before he managed to convince Dr. Rao that he was no danger to himself, at least no more so than he had ever been, and that was only accomplished after an impassioned plea to Emma Frost. _Dig around for yourself,_ he’d told her during her one and only visit. _You told me before I’m a shit telepath. Not like I can lie to you, of all people._

That he had opened up to her at all was enough for her to believe him. Her attempts at playing therapist via training sessions back at the Massachusetts Academy had never fared so well, Jono knew, and part of him had secretly reveled in the way her mood steadily worsened during those meetings as the surly teenager across from her used her own teachings to strengthen his defenses to the point she could no longer sift through his thoughts without being noticed. She had taught him well—too well.

So now, after weeks spent as a macabre exhibit of mutations gone wrong, he’d finally bought his freedom. Relatively speaking, at least. He was still under orders to remain in the area, but he was allowed to move about freely.

_Jubilee’s here_ , he’d told Emma the night before, a non-sequitor in the midst of their otherwise boring conversation. Emma’s back had straightened. _I can sense her. She’s so **loud.** Her thoughts, they’re . . . they’re always so loud. So busy. But something isn’t right._

Emma had volunteered nothing beyond a brief flash of numbers Jono couldn’t discern in his mind and mild surprise that his telepathy had developed to the point he could read others’ thoughts. It hadn’t, not really, but he didn’t bother explaining that to his former teacher. Jubilee had always been different. She had always been a bright, blinding light in the clutter of his mind, an obnoxious noise he couldn’t block out. Their years together had taught him how to muffle that endless chatter, but he could never cut her out completely. She was it. She was all he had left, after he had buried some friends and lost touch with others. She was all that kept him from finding a taller bridge and deeper water, no matter how her boundless glee and optimism irritated him.

So when he was released from his cell (sorry, _observation unit_ ) to explore the rest of what might as well have been a prison, he sought out that light, tracing the paths her thoughts had carved toward his mind, knowingly or not. There were strings there, knotted and frayed but glittering still, and he followed them through hidden corridors and restricted areas until he found her, the beast in the center of the labyrinth.

He almost wished he hadn’t.

There was no spark this time, no fire, no youthful excitement like she usually showed him after any length of time apart. She did not bounce on her heels and fling herself at him, straining to overcome their height difference by looping her arms around his neck and pulling him down into a reluctant hug. She did not throw a friendly insult at him and then demand to know when he’d gone illiterate and forgotten how to so much as send her an email or a text message to let her know he was still alive.

She was so very still and quiet, in fact, that if not for the familiar hum in his mind, Jono might have thought he’d been mistaken and that this wasn’t Jubilee at all.

The fluorescent lighting around them was dim but still harsh enough to reveal Jubilee pressed against the far wall of a glass enclosure—much like the one Jono had found himself in, he realized with not a little anger, but with stronger walls. Her knees were drawn to her chest, her face turned away from him, her usual bright wardrobe replaced with the same dull blue scrubs he still wore himself.

She wasn’t being held for the same reasons Dr. Rao had so helpfully confined him. He knew that much. In fact, looking around the room, he doubted anyone was watching at all except for perhaps via surveillance footage. She still had a few accents of color, neon rubber bands around her wrists like she always wore. They had taken Jono’s leather cuffs. She still had her shoelaces and the cord in her drawstring pants; they had taken those from Jono as well, as if he had a throat to crush or lungs to deprive of air. “Just a matter of course,” Dr. Rao had told him, and he’d laughed at her again.

No, Jubilee was not being protected from herself. Given the absence of anyone else in the area and the uncomfortable suspicion Jono had that she had been left here deliberately, she was a threat. But to whom, exactly? Bitter men like himself who had suicidal dreams but no way to realize them? Jubilee was not to be taken lightly when she was angry, but she was hardly the sort of threat that needed to be quarantined in such a manner. “Come on, Sparky, a little fun never hurt anyone,” she’d told him once (dozens of times, if he stopped to count the occasions), and now that limitless energy had been bottled, the light all but snuffed, and Jono—

He’d been sincere in telling Emma and Dr. Rao that he had no plans to make another attempt on his own life, but he hadn’t felt quite _this_ hopeless since the last time. Staring at Jubilee huddled in on herself, silent and motionless . . . the Thames had been unusually calm that day too, Jono remembered, and the concrete barrier along the bridge’s walkway had been so cold under his hooked fingers that it was a relief for them, too, when he finally pried them away.

The glass of the cell was so very cold under his palm, and he didn’t remember touching the wall in the first place.

He blinked, just as disoriented as when he’d been dragged from the river by useless prats who couldn’t see past their own fear of death to just let him do what needed to be done. He had cursed rabidly at them, screamed as only he could then; one of the rescuers suffered an aneurysm on the spot from an untrained, wildly emotional telepath ripping into his brain with the psychic equivalent of a jackhammer.

Jono had no lungs to drown anymore. He could break his bones, but he could not smash his body entirely against the water any more than he could sink below the surface and hope for release. Oh, he felt the pain of impact the moment he touched the water, icy and unforgiving as it swallowed him, and he caught himself trying to gasp even as he sank deeper. His body fought, instincts kicking in and trying to force him to swim toward the sunlight flickering overhead. But it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t destroy him any faster or more effectively than the energy inside him.

He had no lungs to drown, no heart to slow to a crawl and then stop, no mouth with which to recite one last, meaningless prayer just in case the priests of his childhood had been right all along. But he could still scream, apparently, even if only in his mind (which was almost worse than not being able to at all), and he could fear, and he could _feel_. And in this, he realized, he too could perish, though not in any way he’d actually sought.

He watched Jubilee, so vibrant and colorful and now _broken,_ and he realized that he could still drown after all.

The glass was thick enough that it barely made any sound at all when he slapped his palm against it repeatedly, but it was enough to get Jubilee’s attention. Her head snapped up with startling quickness, and there was something sharp and keen in her eyes that had never been there before, something ancient and not entirely good, and Jono felt his veins run even colder than they had for the past several years without blood to warm them.

_Lee?_ he called while he began pacing the walls, searching for a way in. Jubilee watched him with the same wariness any injured creature might watch its hunter, and Jono tried not to think about the implications of any of that. _Where’s the bloody door? Why are you in there? What—_

“Go away.”

Jono stopped abruptly, brow furrowed. He could overlook not being greeted with the same stifling enthusiasm he had come to expect from Jubilee, but to be sent away entirely? _That_ was without precedent, and the clamp threatened to tighten down around his nonexistent lungs far harder than the Thames had ever done.

_The hell is going on? Jubilee?_

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. Jono found the door at last, if it could even be called as much. There was a seam in the glass, and when he passed his hand over it a holographic field appeared, his hand displaying as a shadowy form that glowed blue in the unnatural light. A number pad materialized, and he swore to himself.

Numbers. Emma.

He frantically sorted through his memories to try to recover that fleeting glimpse Emma had revealed the previous night, just before she delivered one of her backhanded compliments about his telepathic abilities (or lack thereof). Every time he tried to grasp at them, though, they drifted farther, slipping like smoke between his fingers. There was a four. A four was first. Then . . . then eight, maybe? And another four? There was a zero, he thought, or it might have been a six. It flashed through his mind too quickly to catch.

Four. Eight. Four. Zero.

There was no beep, no angry red denial. The holograph simply faded away, and Jono pounded his fist on the glass.

“I said, go away.”

_Never listened to you before,_ Jono groused, even though they both knew that was patently false. He _tried_ not to listen to her, sure, but she had much more influence on him than either of them probably liked to acknowledge.

He waved his hand until the holographic panel reappeared.

Four. Eight. Four. Six.

The panel disappeared again.

_Sod it._

Four. Eight. Four . . . Eight?

No success that time, either, and Jono smacked his hand against the glass in frustration. He closed his eyes and tried to reach out to the thoughts Emma had shown him earlier, sifting through the clutter until they sharpened and stood out clearly enough to see, and then—

Four. Eight. Zero. Four.

The panel vanished, but this time there was the faintest hiss of air as if from a pneumatic lock, and then a crack in the wall that had been all but invisible moments ago widened to reveal a door. Jono glanced around the room as if to make sure this wasn’t a trap, then stepped into the cell.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

_Neither should you._ He took a hesitant step forward, squinting to get a better look at his friend. She had been crying. That much was obvious. What was _not_ immediately obvious was why her cheeks were stained red, not with the flush of sobbing or the embarrassment of having been caught, but something else entirely. _Are you bleeding?_

Jubilee seemed surprised and scrubbed the back of her hand over her face. “No,” she shot back immediately before choking out a small laugh. “Yeah. I guess.” She continued to wipe at her face and then looked up at Jono. “Whoa. What happened?”

Oh, right. The last time they had seen each other—in their true reality, Jono reminded himself—they had been two very different people, each stripped of their mutations and forced to carve out new identities for themselves. The one Jono adopted wasn’t necessarily the one he wanted; Apocalypse was never a sound role model, after all. Still, it had been better than being a walking nuclear weapon capable only of destruction.

He shrugged and forced himself not to push his hands into the pockets of his trousers. He ran his fingertips over the coarse fabric of the cheap scrubs instead. _Universe decided to fuck me again. You know, the usual._ He moved forward and stopped abruptly when Jubilee scooted back against the wall. _What about you, kid? What happened to you?_

“I’m not a kid.”

_No, I don’t suppose you are anymore,_ Jono agreed, plucking at a loose string and twisting it around his fingers until he could snap it from the hem of his shirt. _I don’t suppose any of us are kids anymore. Haven’t been for a while._

Jubilee snorted and hid her face against her knees, hugging them tighter to her chest. When she spoke, her voice was muffled and barely audible. “Please, just go.”

_Remember how many times you’d barge in on me and ignore me when I told you to piss off?_ He heard a faint snort followed by an equally quiet groan, and the corners of his eyes lifted in the best approximation of a smile he could still make. _Payback’s a bitch, et cetera, et cetera._

“I don’t—” Her voice broke, and her shoulders trembled as she tried to regain her composure. Jono noticed with some concern how her fingers curled tightly into her arms folded atop her knees. “I don’t wanna hurt you, Sparky.”

_Then don’t._

She looked up at him then, dumbfounded, and there was no mistaking the crimson trails on her face that time. Jono’s brow furrowed as he studied her.

“You think it’s that easy? You think I can just . . . I can just turn this off? Go back to being halfway normal?”

Jono blinked in surprise, and in the time it took for his eyes to close and open again, Jubilee had crossed the distance between them and thrown him against the glass wall with terrifying speed. Up close, he could see her eyes were jet black, and when she opened her mouth to hiss at him, a pair of twin fangs flashed in the light. He squirmed under the arm pressed against his shoulders, pinning him to the wall with a strength Jubilee should never have possessed.

_Fucking hell._

“Yeah,” Jubilee shot back, peeling her lips back to reveal more of her teeth. “Believe me, you don’t know what I’m capable of. Not anymore. Neither does anyone else, but apparently they have some ideas.”

Forcing himself to remain calm (it was just deep water, he didn’t die then, he couldn’t die, this was Jubilee), he risked a quick glance around the cell, then locked eyes with Jubilee, refusing to let her break the stare. _They locked you up like a bloody animal. You don’t deserve that._

“And no one else deserves to have their throat ripped out ‘cause I’m hungry. See how that works?”

_You’re not—_

“Stop it!” she screamed, dark red tears brimming in her eyes again. “Jono, stop! You can’t fix this, and all you’re gonna do is get your dumb ass killed if you stay here. I can’t control this . . . this . . . whatever it is.”

_If you wanted to kill me, I’d be dead already. And besides._ He tugged at the edge of his bandages, letting them unravel enough to spill bright orange flame-like energy tendrils between them. _Pretty sure I’d need blood for you to actually bother with me._

Jubilee snarled and shoved at him with more strength than her tiny frame should have possessed, and it was only the fact that his back was already against the glass that kept him from careening backwards in a graceless display of long limbs and poor coordination.

“I could kill you,” she repeated as she stalked back to the other side of the cell, eyes never once leaving him and making him feel more than a little like a small mouse trapped by an especially sadistic cat. “You know that, right? Blood or no blood.”

_I’m a bit harder to kill than most_ , Jono pointed out, eyebrows quirking slightly. His head dipped to the side just enough to send a few strands of dark hair tumbling into his eyes. He didn’t bother pushing them away. _Hell, I know myself pretty well, I think, and even I’ve not had much luck there._

A line, barely visible, creased Jubilee’s brow, and he nodded once to let her know she had heard him correctly. It couldn’t have come as any huge surprise to anyone who knew him, particularly one who knew him as well as Jubilee did, that he hadn’t enjoyed the most stable relationship with his own self-preservation. Not that he’d told anyone; he supposed Xavier knew and had probably passed along his medical records to Sean and Emma, but he had never outright _told_ anyone what had happened. He’d hinted at it once or twice—a little black humor that was dark even for him, a preference for long sleeves to hide the lines he’d carved into his arms during the worst times—but he had never come right out and said, “Yes, all your suspicions are true, and I am the walking stereotype you think I am who’s tried to kill himself.” Wasn’t much unique about that, he figured. Came with the territory. No one became a superhero who didn’t already have a raging martyr complex, so it was probably stranger to find someone who _wasn’t_ suicidal on at least an unconscious level.

But still. The confirmation seemed to be enough to get through to Jubilee, and she finally stopped to look at him, _really_ look at him.

“Did you—”

_All I’m saying_ , he interrupted, already regretting having said anything about himself, _is that it’s gonna take more than Buffy part two to do me in._

Jubilee continued to stare, though at least a glimmer of her usual personality seemed to be trying to peer through. “Buffy was a vampire _slayer_ , dumbass.”

_Sorry. I never watched it._

“It’s in the title!”

_It might’ve been clever wording. Like Buffy the vampire, comma, slayer. You know, like she was a vampire also happened to be a slayer._

“Oh my God. You’re smarter than this, Jono.”

_Filthy lies and rumors, sunshine._

He was, of course, and he knew exactly what he was doing. Thankfully, the move seemed to be working. The angry way Jubilee’s face had contorted was starting to give way to mere frustration, and he could deal with that. Was used to seeing it, even. He _couldn’t_ deal with seeing her look like a murderous predator. It wasn’t her, not the bubbly girl he remembered, though he was well aware she had always had a temper about her.

She let out an annoyed sigh and then dropped back down to the ground, arms folded stubbornly across her chest, head turned away from him. Unfortunately for her, Jono had never been one to take a hint (and even less likely to take it if he noticed it). He slowly bridged the distance between them, very gently poking the toes of his shoe against her bare foot. Somewhat inanely, he caught himself wondering why she wasn’t wearing any shoes at all.

_Hey._

She didn’t look up. He took that as tacit permission to sit down next to her, their shoulders just barely touching.

_I’m not gonna ask what happened. You’ll tell me if you want me to know. I won’t even ask why the bastards have got you caged up in here like some bloody zoo animal. But you an’ me, love, we’ve . . . we’ve seen some shit._ He chuckled, or at least as best he could, the sound ringing hollow even to him and even beyond how unnatural it always sounded when relayed only via his poor telepathic abilities. _And we’ve been through a lot together. S’pretty much the only tradition I’ve still got, sitting about and whinging with you. Misery and company and all that. I need you to whinge with me, see. I need someone to enable me in my pity parties, and I think it’s really quite selfish of you to not do that._

Still no response, and Jono was starting to wonder if he’d miscalculated. Whatever had happened had left a more indelible mark on Jubilee’s psyche than even her body, and he wondered (not for the first time) if he was too far out of his element.

Odd, the twisting paths fate took. So often before, he was the silent, brooding one left to stew in his own heartache, motionless, silent, lost in his own shame/pity/anger/desperation/whatever he chose to focus on that day. Jubilee was the blinding ray of sunlight cast through the dirty film of his windows, so bright as to be nauseating, and he raged against it more often than not. Screamed in an incoherent way, without noise, that odd mixture of feeling-sensation that telepaths used. He ignored her. He insulted her, belittled her, scoffed at what a “kid” could possibly do for him. Pleaded with her to just go. And sometimes—not often, but sometimes—he treated her just as he had the discharge nurse. _“I’m fine. I’m just having a bad day. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. It’s **fine**. Just tired.” _

Just tired. Always tired, always teetering on a bone-deep exhaustion that no amount of sleep would ever touch.

She rarely accepted that. Every now and then he got even nastier than he intended, cut a little too deep when he lashed out, making her throw back an insult at him and retreat. It never lasted, though. She would return, more determined than ever.

It hadn’t happened all that much at the Academy. Angelo had been that for him, that ever-present grounding force to let him rant and pout when he needed, who let him tremble with the odd not-crying he was stuck with in this damnably useless body, but years passed. Angelo passed. Jono’s resolve to keep the entire world at a distance passed—to an extent. Jubilee was one of a very few granted the privilege (or curse) of being allowed in to see the ravages of his mind, almost as scarred and ruined as the rest of him. They had grown up, both of them, and some jagged shard in Jono’s broken head blunted just enough to let him accept her. Maybe she finally wore him down after spending so much time together. Maybe he just missed Angelo that badly. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care to analyze it too deeply. He’d rather not learn he was an even shittier person than he already believed himself to be.

She came knocking sometimes now, less often than before due to the different paths their lives had taken—but those paths always intertwined again. And when she knocked now, he answered. Not always enthusiastically, and often only after repeated, colorful threats that were really quite comical from such a small girl—woman. Woman, he reminded himself, not the fourteen-year-old girl he still mostly remembered her as.

He let her drag him out into the world. Went to movies. Went to restaurants and bought booze for her when she lost her fake ID (“It’s not fake,” she had protested when he called her out on it, as if _he_ was anyone to complain about someone else sneaking alcohol while underage, “it just matches what’s on the inside.”). Went to the park and fed the squirrels like some terrible mockery of a couple of old pensioners.

Other times, they stayed in. They watched TV or listened to music. She showed him an endless playlist of stupid or creepy videos she’d found.

And sometimes they did nothing. Sometimes he was so weary, so weighed down with his own melancholy, that it was all Jubilee could do to get him to move enough to let her join him on his bed. It wasn’t sexual, the way she sometimes held him, his head cradled in her lap and her fingers carding through the mop of snarled curls that he called hair. She stroked his neck or his back, the movements a soothing reminder that he was there, he was real, that there was still _some_ part of his wretched shell that could register physical contact. They spoke every now and then—or more accurately, _she_ spoke. About nothing. He listened, pretending her voice didn’t grate on him the same way most Americans’ voices did. Never mind that he’d lived there for years and grown up consuming American media anyway; the accents still seemed harsh to him, plain and nasally and utterly foreign still. They made him homesick in the same way endless sunny afternoons made him long for the damp chill and overcast skies that reminded him of . . . not better days, but _different_ days, perhaps.

The last time that happened, after he’d refused to emerge from isolation for almost a week, Jubilee had invited herself into his room and set up shop on his bed, same as always. And just as always, he’d let her position him like a surly rag doll, pillowed his head on her chest and listened to her heartbeat—from _her_ heart, not one that had been grown or magicked into existence or however his own had appeared of late—and told himself the sound was comforting and not like digging razors into his flesh. Jubilee had noticed _that,_ too, her fingers skating along the inside of his arm suddenly stopping when they brushed an unfamiliar patch of raised skin. He could almost _hear_ her eyebrows knitting together in concern. If he’d had the strength to do so, he would have withdrawn his arm, maybe even told her to leave.

That had been a bad day.

“It’s old,” he assured her, a promise immediately betrayed by the chill that shot down his spine when she touched the wound again. It was too fresh for that, a single dark slash that had fascinated him simply because unlike its older siblings, it actually could bleed, _had_ bled.

“Are you . . .” Jubilee trailed off, seeming to be struggling to find the proper words. “Do you . . . need help?”

She meant well. She did, and Jono knew that, but he’d laughed anyway. Sure, he was “whole” again, if only by yet another cruel joke the universe played on him via that bunch of mad Apocalypse followers. He should be happy, or at least _happier._ He shouldn’t still be carving himself up. The mark on his arm just below his elbow shouldn’t have had mirrors on his thigh. He shouldn’t have laughed when he saw blood—actual _blood_ for once—staining the blade. It should have worried him that even with a functional body again, even after being given something he thought he wanted, something was still so profoundly damaged in his mind that this, _this_ felt more natural to him.

“All fucking kinds of it. But no. I’m fine. It was . . . I messed up. But that’s it. I swear.”

He didn’t know when it had become so easy for him to lie, much less to people he actually cared about, but there it was, out and open and ugly between them. Jubilee had to have known, but she just frowned and kept quiet.

Jono tried to thank her for that a couple weeks later when the fog in his head lifted enough that he agreed to go out with her and the rest of the New Warriors. After a few shots of whatever had been placed in front of him (he’d never been a picky drinker, even less so when it was new to him all over again), he’d made out with her in a corner booth at whatever shithole bar they were in that time. It had felt weird and wrong and exciting all at once, and with his hand sneaking up the back of her shirt, he thought about asking her to ditch the rest of the team and head back with him, maybe even said as much with his telepathic shields all but obliterated by the alcohol flooding a system that was no longer used to it. His attempts at playing the seducer, a role that had come so easily to him once, failed abruptly when he had to excuse himself to take a piss. On the way back, he got distracted by another pretty face and ended up making out with her too, some anonymous blonde with dark blue eyes and just enough of a twang to let him pretend.

God, he was pathetic. And predictable.

He went home with her instead, and when he sobered up the next morning, thoroughly satisfied but racked by a pervasive guilt it took a while to name, he trudged back to his teammates—to Jubilee in particular—with excuses on a new set of lips that weren’t yet accustomed to uttering them. Jubilee blew him off and reminded him they had more important things to worry about. She was right, of course, but he wondered, not for the last time, what might have been.

So when had that changed? When had fate decided to turn everything upside down and make _him_ the one trying to cheer _her_ up? It was a role for which he was uniquely unqualified, and when she didn’t respond to his teasing there in that cell, he slumped against the wall next to her and stared down at his hands. He couldn’t remember the last time he had even picked up a guitar, let alone played one, but his fingertips were calloused anyway. Self-conscious for a reason he couldn’t identify—and about such a stupid thing, given the gaping hole the made up much of his body—he thought to hide his hands. Only one of them made it, tucked under a thigh to keep it warm. He’d always been cold-natured, and with his circulatory system not having much to power it anymore, he tended to stay so cold as to be numb. Every little bit of warmth helped, he supposed.

It was the other hand that betrayed him, that slipped into Jubilee’s instead of seeking parallel heat under his leg. He didn’t recall Jubilee’s skin being as frigid as his own, and the sudden shock made him turn his head to look at her, just in time to catch her staring. The second he moved, though, she turned her head as well to face the other direction, folding in on herself just a little more.

_It’ll be okay._

Jubilee snorted but didn’t look at him. Jono had to allow himself a small chuckle of his own.

_Yeah, I know. Sounds like bullshit to me too. Did every time you told me the same, in fact. But we’re tough, we are. I don’t know how it’ll be okay, or when, but it will be. We’ll get by. We always do._

“I don’t wanna just _get by_ ,” she spat out, voice shaking just a bit. Jono squeezed her hand as though he could steady her words through contact. “I’m so tired of just _getting by._ When do we get to _live_ , Jono?”

_That’s the bloody question, innit? I wish I had the answer. I don’t. I’m sorry. But while you’re trying to suss it out, at least you won’t be doing it on your own._

Finally, _finally_ , she curled her fingers around his, and that was enough. He squeezed back and leaned his head against the glass, content to sit in companionable silence. No one had been there to hold his hand, to make well-meaning but empty promises about how things would turn out for the best. No one had tried to pull him back from the edge. Maybe Jubilee couldn’t do that, and maybe he couldn’t do that for her. But if they were doomed to jump anyway, or even if they were to be pushed back in every time they climbed out, they could at least keep each other afloat.

Jono wondered if their cold skin would even register the water, or if they would let themselves be submerged because even death wasn’t much different than what they had. A reversal of that science experiment about the frogs who would sit in a pan of water that slowly turned up to boiling. The frogs probably had better sense than the two of them.

_I wanted to give up_ , he admitted, “voice” almost so quiet and weak through the link it might have been mistaken for someone’s imagination, had he been speaking to someone who wasn’t intimately familiar with his telepathy. _Still do some days. A lot of days, actually. But this is the hand I’m dealt, so I guess I’ll play it through. And you know, I used to get so angry at you for trying to pull me out of that. Part of me hated you for it. But you didn’t give up. I don’t know why. I know I didn’t make things easy on you. I was a right prick, honestly, and I wouldn’t have blamed you for just walking away._

Jubilee’s hand twitched in his as if she wanted to pull it away; Jono tightened his grip.

_For a long time, I didn’t know why you didn’t. I never knew why Ange didn’t either. Couldn’t figure why you people thought you could fix something like me. Took me a long while to realize you weren’t trying to fix me, not exactly. You were just trying to hold the rest of me together. Help me keep some part of myself, you know?_

He nudged her shoulder again and leaned down just enough to try to get into her peripheral vision.

_Let me do that for you. I can’t fix whatever’s wrong with you. No one can do that. But I can help you fight. I can help you hold on to what you’ve got left. Will do, even, whether you want me around or not. You’re worth it. You saw something worthwhile in me for . . . God, for fuck knows what reason, and you’re a better person than I am. There’s gotta be something in you worth fighting for as well, even if you can’t see it right now._

The tension in Jubilee’s shoulders slid away, however minutely, though she said nothing, not for several long moments. Jono was considering trying to reach her again when he heard her—very quiet, heartbreakingly somber, but very much _her._

“Shut up, Oprah.”

Yeah. They were going to be okay—whatever that still meant for either of them.


End file.
